What Makes a Great Leaper? A Number of Theories Abound

What enables some basketball players to soar whereas others remain ground-bound?

Is is heredity, environment, luck, pluck, fate or what?

Theories abound.

“You’ll notice there’s a prototype body for leapers,” Wilt Chamberlain said. “Strong haunches, thin toward the ankles. They’re race-horse thin, like whippets.

“Jumping wasn’t something I taught myself, it was something I was born with. You’re either blessed with a certain amount of jumping ability or you’re not.”

Many great leapers worked hard off the court to improve their spring. Tom Hawkins jumped rope and did roadwork wearing combat boots. David Thompson worked out wearing ankle weights, as did Herb White. Thompson also worked out with weights for overall leg and body strength.

There is a theory of elevation by inspiration. Billy Cunningham says he grew up playing on tough playgrounds where you didn’t get to shoot unless you jumped high enough to get the ball.

David Thompson was inspired by an older brother who could dunk.

White, who is white, said: “The neighborhood where I grew up bordered on a black neighborhood, so I played ball a lot with black players. That’s where I finally learned to jump.”

That inspiration theory is endorsed by Dr. Jon Franks, a Century City chiropractor. Franks claims he learned to jump much higher as a kid simply by playing against other kids who jumped high, and denies that any race is superior at leaping.

“I’m 6-4, and I could touch 11-6 in high school, and I’m Jewish,” Franks said. “I did that at an all-star camp. I had never done 11 feet before, but I did 11-6 out of pride. Competition is a point of great importance (in development of leaping ability).”

However, Franks says there is a physiological component of jumping: “The calf-Achilles tendon-heel structure is paramount in jumping. The belly of the calf muscle (in the better jumper) is way up by the knee, he has stick legs, long Achilles tendon, a (heel) bone that sticks way out. The Achilles has to come down and around the heel. That makes for a lever-arm effect. The most ignored thing in jumping is upper-body strength. You lead with the upper body, it carries itself up and takes the load off the legs. Michael Jordan has high calves, good quads, great glutes (rear end), good shoulders and chest. He’s real pretty.”

Franks said that “fiber recruitment,” or the abundance of so-called quick-twitch muscle fibers, is essential for good leaping, and that good fiber recruitment can be learned.

Much of leaping is still a mystery. Years ago, when Darrell Griffith was on the U.S. team at the World University Games in a Communist country, he was asked by the hosts to explain his amazing spring.

“I told them it was a God-given talent,” he said then. “But they couldn’t understand that, because they didn’t believe in God.”